On Mon, 2015-02-09 at 13:28 -0800, Keith Keller wrote: > > On Mon, 2015-02-09 at 11:12 -0800, John R Pierce wrote: > >> > >> on a site hosted in Russia which appears to be FULL of copyright violations. > On 2015-02-09, Always Learning <centos at u64.u22.net> wrote: > > > > Probably not really a software pirate but an individual (and a keen > > cyclist) storing some old-ish PDFs on his own web site. > The PDF *itself* is still pirated. It has nothing whatsoever to do with > "software" piracy. > I don't even fully trust docs written by any third party until I can > cross-check it against official documentation. So I definitely do not > think it's okay to trust pirated documentation from a Russian site I > will never be able to know anything about. Keith neither of us know whether or not the Russian man obtained his PDF copy of the book lawfully. In my book-publishing opinion, the PDF appears to have originated from the book's publisher, so the original source must have been *the* official source. Hence the book, in the PDF version, must have been written by the official authors. The existence of an alleged unpaid-for copy on a foreign web site can not, in any sense whatsoever, denigrate, diminish nor deprecate the official authors distinguished achievement. There are poor people all around the world who enjoy computers including Linux and whom would benefit from learning more about Linux. Some who can read English sufficiently proficiently to benefit from the book's text, may be too poor to afford the, to them in their country, "exorbitant" Western price for an "official" copy. Some publishers recognise this reality and sell in third-world countries at a small fraction of the "Western" price. In those circumstances selling PDFs for an extremely low price may be the source of this particular PDF especially as hardbacks and paperbacks could never economically be sold as low as a very low cost "official" PDF copy. Depriving people of learning (also known as education) keeps them in political and economic subjugation to the detriment of the Human race. Would be nice to gain some support for the Centos Learning mailing list suggestion :-) -- Regards, Paul. England, EU. Je suis Charlie.